Live at Basilica Festival

(...)
The event took place in an old factory with cavernous ceilings and
massive old windows. It’s a gorgeous space perfect for both the weirdest
of the weird and the most conventionally beautiful music around.
Saturday night found a comfortable middle point. Beginning the night of
music was Blanko & Noiry,
a Lynchian performance featuring what basically amounted to an older
dude singing in a disquieting baritone over gorgeously dark ambient
music made by a couple people in robes. It was as bizarre as things
got—enough that I’m not exactly sure how much I enjoyed it. There’s a
point where the disconnect between what an artist intends and what an
audience gets out of it gets too large, and that happened here for me. I
just couldn’t connect. The biggest surprise of the night, though, was Hiro Kone,
who built her set on thick pop music that breezed across the huge
room—I’m tempted to say it was stoic but there was something unhinged
about her performance as well.

With the exception of Prince Rama, who played the tightest set I’ve ever seen from them, the rest of the night was devoted to New York veterans Gang Gang Dance,
who, every time I see them, get better at figuring out the parts of
their music that people love the most and then drawing them out into
full songs and Psychic Paramount, who blanketed the entire room in such
thick smoke that you couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of
you. It was loud and fully immersive. I think when this nebulous dark
period of New York music is talked about, Psychic Paramount are a band that best represents that era. It’s not difficult to listen to, but it’s confrontational.

What I came away with is that whatever anyone might think is missing
from New York’s experimental music scene…they’re not wrong, but they’re
not right either. It’s just bubbling slightly under the surface, pushing
against restraints, ready to be brought to the world’s attention so it
can be awkwardly thrust onto a too big stage, and the real weirdness can
begin.